Structured Image Authentication System

Abstract

Some of human factors negatively affect many security systems, including the security of user authentication. These human factors are: first, people are slow and unreliable at processing and comparing long meaningless password string; and second, people have limitation difficulties in remembering secure passwords or Personal Identification Number (PIN). Long random strings are difficult to remember, while it is much easier for people to deal with images instead of meaningless strings.In this paper, fundamental weaknesses of knowledge - based authentication schemes are addressed. Then we have investigated how the usability and security of the authentication systems can be improved using hash visualization technique that replaces alphabetical string with structured images. We also examine the requirements of user particularly useful in strings, where people need to repeatedly verify the integrity of data, because people can easily remember the generated images.This approach improves the security, since it relies on the recognition - based authentication. It authenticates a user through recognizing the previously seen images. It is more reliable and easier to use than the traditional recall - based schemes. Furthermore, it has the advantage that it prevents users from choosing weak passwords and limited the difficulties to write down the passwords or sharing them with others.Keywords :User authentication hash visualization, human factors, password authentication system . genetic programming, structured images.

Keywords

Structured, Image